I write this with the sound of our lunchtime entertainment drifting into the farm office – Sam and Gay on fiddle and accordian. It makes our urban farm feel even more bucolic than usual, even with the Shard visible on the horizon.
The other music to our ears at the moment is that the contents of customers’ vegbags this week are going to be overwhelmingly from the farm itself, with only potatoes and carrots supplied from elsewhere.
This week we’ve been getting lots of lovely cherry tomatoes, which is always wonderful. And this week we’re starting to call a halt to the tomato plants’ growth, as they’ve reached their full potential (that’s eight or nine flowering trusses). As October is just six weeks away, it’s time to get our plants to focus on producing and ripening during the summer that remains – so no more height on the tomato plants, please, just juicy red fruits.
We’ve also been harvesting the first green peppers this week, which will be popped into the Large Gourmet bags.
Not only that, but we’ve also been harvesting some gorgeous Florence Long shallots – they are sweet, delicious and easy to use. And if you don’t use a whole shallot in one go, you can put the rest in the fridge for later, of course.
We’re also planning ahead this week – that means jobs like sowing winter lettuces, ordering a few extra seeds for winter and starting to prepare and compost the ground for garlic for planting in September and October.